Shashi Ahuja, MD, must pay $2.6 million in damages for a botched procedure that left a Fort Wayne, Ind., woman with a disfigured and unusable right leg, wane.com reported May 26.
The lawsuit, initially filed in 2014, alleges patient Zandra Chapman went to the now-closed St. Joseph Hospital for a cardiac catheterization procedure. According to the suit, Dr. Ahuja mishandled a new device and left a polymer in an artery in her leg.
She experienced increasingly worse pain following the procedure, the report said, and despite calls to Dr. Ahuja's office was never told to come in for an evaluation. Three days later, she went to an emergency room where a physician found foreign material in her artery, which caused her artery to be occluded and develop a blood clot. Despite extensive treatment, her lower leg has become greatly disfigured, the report said.
A 10-person jury awarded her $2.6 million in damages.